Letter to the editor: Pa. should use the death penalty

Tribune-ReviewDecember 3, 2018

The people of Pennsylvania should be ultimately grateful that the federal government is prosecuting and seeking the death penalty for Robert Bowers in the murders at the Squirrel Hill synagogue. If found guilty and sentenced to death, the only way that that sentence would be carried out is if the federal court system did it.

Pennsylvania still has the death penalty but refuses to use it. There are a host of criminals on death row who don’t have to worry that the death sentence will be carried out. For many of these criminals, there is no chance whatsoever that a witness or DNA test years later will clear them. They did it! And there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they did do it. John Lesko, Michael Travaglia, Richard Poplawski, Richard Baumhammers, Ronald Taylor, etc., etc.

People say the death penalty is not a deterrent. How can it be a deterrent if you never use it? Pennsylvania refuses to carry out a lawful sentence on people who had absolutely no problem carrying out that sentence on their victims. Judges who continually grant appeals in these cases, evidently for no other justifiable reason except to deny carrying out the sentence, maybe should be hearing civil cases instead of criminal cases.

And governors like Tom Wolf are part of the problem. You owe it to the victims’ families to see that justice is done, despite your own personal views, because it is the law and it is the sentence.